Weekend meals

Weekly dinner was on Saturday night. I was originally going to make pizza, but when I realized it was going to be 90+ degrees, I looked for alternative recipes that did not require the use of an oven. So I went with a grilled panzanella salad, courtesy of my favorite person, Ina Garten. Ina's regular panzanella salad is delish, but her grilled version is heaven. I grilled up some red onions and red & yellow peppers on my handy panini press/griddler and made my own croutons.


In addition to the salad, I served some meats and cheese (p.s. I love my pear cheese board!), olives, and fruit. I also picked up these delicious fruit pastes from Whole Foods, they were a nice complement to the cheese.


On Sunday, while G watched hours and hours of football and munched on leftover cheese and crackers, I made myself some kimchi fried rice with spam for lunch. I used low-sodium spam, I guess I was kind of scared the regular spam would make me really bloated and thirsty. While it was still yummy, I think next time I will try the regular spam, because the dish just wasn't salty enough...and maybe add some more kimchi juice, for added flavor and color.

Yummy pasta

For dinner tonight, I made a simple pasta dish -- penne in a cream tomato sauce with basil, topped with parmesan and BACON. I use canned San Marzano tomatoes to make the sauce, which I highly recommend. The pasta doesn't look so pretty, but it was delicious!

We also had some La Brea Bakery olive bread with olive oil and the fancy balsamic. I finally had a chance to use the "vintage Italian" plates for the oil/vinegar. :) Too bad the vinegar covers the cute train drawings.

For drinks, a tall glass of purple milk:
J/k, it's just my favorite wine drank!

Chili for a chilly night

I woke up this morning with a serious chili craving...so after scouring the internets for good chili and cornbread (you can't eat chili without cornbread!) recipes, I headed to the market after work to pick up the necessary ingredients. Who knew you could put cocoa powder in chili? Here's my turkey chili cooking in my dutch oven, which is so much better than making it in a crock pot...the last time I tried the crock pot method, everything burned -- that's right, I somehow messed up a crock pot recipe!:

Yes, it's a giant pot, we will be eating chili for days.

As for the cornbread, I looked on the Food Network site and saw several unappetizing recipes by someone I won't call out by name (but she sure likes butta!)...and then I found a delicious-sounding Cheddar Dill Cornbread recipe by the Barefoot Contessa. I switched out the milk for creamed corn, which my favorite food blog, The Kitchn, says guarantees a moist cornbread. Here's the cornbread straight out of the oven, with some melted cheddar on top:

Sadly, the cornbread was a bit bland and too moist. How can three of my favorite things -- corn, dill, and cheese! -- be bland? No clue, but I couldn't really taste any of those ingredients, they seemed to cancel each other out.

Still dinner was delicious...I washed it all down with a nice glass of my new favorite wine drank, Tinto.

Polo and a Pup

Gav and I finally had a weekend off together and spent a nice day at the Santa Barbara Polo fields. We'll have to go and take a nice picnic next time the CBs come for a stay.

Gav also got us seats in the member's only area. We were clearly out of place, being that we were the only ones under 60.

Later that evening, we got to puppy-sit Berlin. Isn't she sweet?

After having Jett stay with us and puppy-sitting Berlin, we really miss having a dog around. But we're also enjoying the benefits of being doggy-free. Like last minute trips to sin city! Vegas here we come!

nom nom nom

Following Minsun's post, I had an intense hankering for some Korean eats. Unfortunately the only makings for Korean I had was sticky rice. I stopped by the local Korean market, Choi's Oriental on the way home from work and picked up some pre-marinated bulgogi and cucumber kimchi! It's a bit difficult to find beef sliced thinly in these parts so even though I didn't make the marinade myself it, it was delish! I also picked up some sesame leaves as I was going through the aisles at Choi's. Not quite a feast but a satisfying meal for two indeed.

It was Gav's idea to capture this meal for the blog but I was pretty hun-gray and rushed the pics. Will work on my skillz.

P.S. Gav's friends are in town from across the pond and they're putting together a lovely Indian meal tonight. Pictures to ensue. YUM!

Thank God for Tiny Tims!

I got home tonight to find a bag of dog poo on my front steps. WHY are people so rude?! I was fuming mad and was considering some kind of retaliatory move (like taking the bag of poo and hurling it -- since it wasn't even tied! -- at the neighboring apartment building, which is full of assholes with annoying dogs...I have no evidence, but I blame someone in that building for this incident because those people clearly have no understanding of dog poo etiquette), when I looked over at my tomato plant and saw this:

Do you see those gorgeous green globes?! That's right, people, at long last, the Tiny Tim tomatoes have appeared! I kind of forgot about my anger over the terrorist dog poo act when I saw these suckers!!
Oh, and these flowers/vines wrapping themselves around the railing also made me happy:


So the moral of this story is that tomatoes/flowers make me happy...and they saved me from doing something crazy like throwing dog poo at my neighbors! I behaved like a grown-up and just threw the bag away in the trash can.

A Korean feast!

My mom came over for dinner tonight and we made several delicious Korean (and one Japanese) dishes. On the menu -- fried pancakes with zucchini and jalapeno, spicy pork, spicy tuna roll, sliced up cucumbers to dip in a spicy/sweet chili paste, cucumber kimchi, spicy rice cake saute, and calamari (Korean style!). I guess the theme was spice...I didn't notice until I typed it all out that every dish was kind of spicy! But, it wasn't too bad, even G could eat most of the dishes.

The pictures aren't that great because I was in a hurry TO EAT. And I guess in full disclosure, I should admit that the spicy rice cakes and calamari are not homemade (they're from the Korean market)...I don't have the skills to make those dishes yet!

Rabbits in the kitchen (not to eat, that is!)

I got this cute rabbit jewelry dish for my kitchen a while back. The ears are perfect for holding my rings while I'm doing the dishes, cooking, etc.

Yesterday I was at my mom's house and found a companion for the above rabbit -- a giant yellow rabbit dish!
I have no idea what its purpose is. Huge butter dish? Candy jar? My mom was using it to store chocolates. It was just so adorable, I stole it from my mom (thanks, mom!) to add to my kitchen rabbit collection (i.e., the one rabbit jewelry dish noted above)...and I'm using it for a totally random purpose:
To store my onion/shallots! Bizarre, I know! But they fit in there, and I read somewhere that you're supposed to store onions/shallots/garlic away from light, preferably with some ventilation. This giant rabbit dish doesn't really ventilate, so we'll see how long the onion/shallots last. But doesn't the rabbit look so cute next to my garlic jar?

New Do, Toad-Style

I got a haircut this weekend, courtesy of Mitch. I paid her with a GTL and a Jalaroni Pizza Pretzel. I think I kind of look like Toad, with bangs. Some photos, for comparison purposes:

Mimosas and brunch

This weeks Thurday dinner moved to Sunday brunch. We kicked things off with glasses of Mimosa; my favorite way to start cooking. Min prepared breakfast, as we girls (and boy) watched and waited. We had thick slices of french toast, crisp bacon, home fries and fruit.


Mimosas, how we do...









Brunch was perfect!

I love Elote!

First post, yay! I feel very technically challenged right now, so I have no idea how to position these pictures...hopefully I will get better with time!

G and I were supposed to go out to dinner with friends tonight, but G's been sick for a few days and was feeling especially under the weather today. So we rescheduled dinner and stayed in...for dinner, I made Elote, which I've been wanting to make for a while now. Elote is Mexican roasted corn slathered in mayo, Cotija cheese, chile, cumin, salt, and lime. A-mazing. I also made some caprese sandwiches using this delicious La Brea Bakery roasted garlic loaf. To my pleasant surprise, there were nuggets of roasted garlic in the bread! I drizzled some of that balsamic we got in SB on the sandwich. Yum!